Buy some rad stickers, why don’t ya?

As usual, I fail when it comes to pro­mot­ing Cult Film Club , being over a week late in announc­ing that we have TOTALLY RAD STICKER PACKS for sale!

I’m hop­ing the all caps will make up for my lack­adaisi­cal­ness (it’s a word, I checked) and put me back in the good graces of my co-hosts Pax and Shawn who’ve been (prob­a­bly) talk­ing behind my back.

Take a look at these bad boys:

These lim­ited run stick­ers were designed by our own Shawn Robare and fea­ture his orig­i­nal art­work (again, I do noth­ing around here). Instead of beg­ging you guys for tips and dona­tions to help with pro­duc­tion and host­ing costs, Shawn had the bril­liant idea to win you over with “no tip­ping” Steve Buscemi stickerlust.

Each pack is $7 and includes the Cult Film Club logo, Offi­cial Mem­ber Badge, Phan­tom Ticket Taker, and Mr. No Tip­ping him­self, Steve Buscemi.

All pro­ceeds go directly toward our pro­duc­tion and host­ing costs, and not, I repeat NOT toward cans of Four Loko, which is how we make the magic happen.

Best $3 I Ever Spent: Bicycle Zombie Playing Cards

When the zom­bie apoc­a­lypse hap­pens– and it will –you’re going to need a good set of play­ing cards to pass the time with other survivors.

I sug­gest Bicy­cle Zom­bie Play­ing Cards :

You really can’t go wrong with Bicy­cles. They’ve been mak­ing these cards since 1885.  You think a lit­tle thing like the zom­bie apoc­a­lypse is going to stop them?

I picked these up in Wal­greens the other day for just $3. With price­less zom­bie sur­vival tips printed on every card, this deck has already paid for itself.

The face cards for every suit fea­ture different-looking zom­bies. Clubs are a sickly flesh color, clearly in the early stages of decay. Hearts are a pale, icy blue–perhaps these are cold-weather zom­bies? Dia­monds are a putrid yel­low rem­i­nis­cent of puss. Finally, Spade zom­bies are a clas­sic grayish-green.

The Joker card pays homage to the orig­i­nal, with a zomb­i­fied King ris­ing from his grave marked 808. Nice touch.

The backs of the cards fea­ture a bloody take on the zom­bie King theme, with rot­ting hands stretch­ing into the four corners.

I’ve already stashed these away in my sur­vival kit. If you’re lucky enough to end up in my group of sur­vivors, you won’t be with­out entertainment.

Target’s $1 section has some really cool, geeky stuff in it lately.

I usu­ally skip past Target’s dol­lar sec­tion (that lit­tle crap-filled area close to the front door, strate­gi­cally located so that you’re required to walk past it), hav­ing learned to ignore the siren call that is messy aisles of picked-through bins over­flow­ing with cheap sweat shop goods from China. But this past week­end, whad­dya know, I  was actu­ally shop­ping for cheap crap! But cheap crap sounds so much nicer when you call it “stock­ing stuffers,” doesn’t it?

Any­way, I ended up find­ing some pretty cool lit­tle chotchkies that may or may not have been been made by child labor­ers (but prob­a­bly). A stronger, more socially aware per­son would have marched past such fool­ish­ness, off to buy USDA Cer­ti­fied Organic Green laun­dry deter­gent or what­ever the hell it is those types of peo­ple buy. But this is me we’re talk­ing about. I live for cheap crap.  So I afforded myself the excuse of need­ing to fill stock­ings with it, and took a closer look. Usu­ally I’m pretty dis­ap­pointed in this sec­tion (or “The Dol­lar Spot,” I think it’s called) but not this time. I found tons of great lit­tle gifts. The only prob­lem is that most of them are for me.

Okay, some of them  are actu­ally des­tined to go in someone’s stock­ing, like this first item here (don’t worry, the per­son who this is for never reads my blog. I know, he is less cool because of it.):

‘A Christ­mas Story’ Stationery

It cer­tainly is glo­ri­ous! Tar­get had a bunch of these A Christ­mas Story themed sta­tionery items in var­i­ous designs. I chose this par­tic­u­lar notepad because The Old Man is my favorite char­ac­ter, as well as the person’s who this is for. (Wait, did I say that right? It’s very late. My gram­mar goes to hell after 2:00 a.m.) KNOT A FINGER!

Scrib­ble Stuff Sushi Erasers

This falls firmly in the Shit I Don’t Need cat­e­gory, but LOOK HOW CUTE!! I mean I sup­pose I could always erase some­thing with these, but that would only destroy them in the process and thus erase my affec­tion for these ined­i­ble but delectable-looking pieces of rub­ber sushi. But it’s that minia­ture bot­tle of soy sauce that really sold me on these. I like the level of con­sid­er­a­tion that went into this presentation–like, some­one actu­ally knew I would demand fake soy sauce for my fake sushi. Bless them.

Pac-Man Band-Aids Adhe­sive Banadages

I swear, I will never get used to call­ing non-Band-Aid brand adhe­sive ban­dages “adhe­sive ban­dages.” I have a house rule that my med­i­cine cab­i­net  only be stocked with cool Band-Aids, and I can’t think of any that are much cooler than these…until Nick­elodeon gets on the ball and puts out some Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles ones. I had to buy two pack­ages, though, because they stiff you pretty bad on the quan­tity. Only 10 ban­dages? Really? At least they have three dif­fer­ent awe­some designs:

Makes me want to cut myself just to have an excuse to wear one.

Toad­stool Planner

As tech-geeky as I am, in cer­tain aspects of my life I’m incur­ably old school. For instance, I always keep a small com­bi­na­tion planner/address book like this in my bag, as well as a Mole­sk­ine jour­nal for jot­ting down spur-of-the-moment thoughts, ideas, dates and other things I want to remem­ber. For some rea­son I retain things bet­ter when I actu­ally go through the process of writ­ing them down ver­sus let­ting tech­nol­ogy do all the work for me. I have an affin­ity for any­thing with mushrooms/toadstools on it ( par­tic­u­larly of the 8-bit vari­ety ), and I hadn’t bought a 2013 plan­ner yet. This spoke to me.

Space Invaders…whatever these are.

The pack­age says these are “drink mark­ers,” but they’re basi­cally small, clingy pieces of Space Invaders-shaped sil­i­cone. I guess you’re sup­posed to stick them on your can of Natty Boh Ice, or what­ever you damn hip­ster kids are drink­ing these days. But you could stick them on any­thing, really. Even skin . Think about those pos­si­bil­i­ties for a moment, and all the fun word­play poten­tial ( INVADE HER! ). I’d like to try to come up with a cool use for these–maybe lap­top case dec­o­ra­tions or some­thing. Any suggestions?

The Most Powerful Christmas Sweater in the Universe!

Who among you has the balls to wear this bad boy to the office Christ­mas party?

In a feat of ironic fash­ion design strength I didn’t think was humanly pos­si­ble, 80s Tees has cre­ated a Christ­mas sweater even more glo­ri­ous than their  Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles sweater that I may or may not admit to own­ing. With the bar for ugly Christ­mas sweaters hav­ing been set so high now, where does 80s Tees go from here?

Black Friday “Almost” Impulse Buys

As I was say­ing in my last post, yes­ter­day I was dragged out into the Black Fri­day mad­ness by my sis­ter. Shop­ping def­i­nitely qual­i­fies as one of my least favorite activ­i­ties, let alone shop­ping on one of the busiest days of the year when there’s a real pos­si­bil­ity of being tram­pled to death. It’s also dan­ger­ous for me to go shop­ping with­out a pre-defined plan or any sense of bud­get because what usu­ally hap­pens is I get bored and start actively look­ing for crap to waste money on, almost as if I’m try­ing to jus­tify my being there. I know, it’s unhealthy.

So while trapped at Tar­get, as my sis­ter trolled the shoe and cloth­ing aisles, I went off in search of TMNT stuff . But along the way I passed by a few weird/cool/stupid things that took a lot of will power not to buy.  Here are three Black Fri­day impulse buys I’m proud of myself for resisting:

#1 — Awk­ward Fam­ily Pho­tos: The Board Game (Wtf?)

What the hell? The  Awk­ward Fam­ily Pho­tos  blog has a board game out? When did this hap­pen?? I guess nowa­days any­thing can be a board game, and inter­net pop cul­ture is ripe for the pick­ing. I’m not even really sure what the object of this game is sup­posed to be, but my guess is some­thing that involves wear­ing hideous match­ing out­fits and yelling at your dad to stop drink­ing so much.  What’s next? A board game ver­sion of  We Have Lasers? *

*Actu­ally that’d be kind of awesome.

#2 — Saved by the T-shirt.

As much as I love Saved by the Bell and the idea of proudly dis­play­ing said love for Saved by the Bell on a t-shirt, I decided  against wear­ing Kelly Kapowski.  I mean, that’d be kind of gay, right? Where the hell is the Zack Mor­ris t-shirt?

#3 — Darth Paper Strikes Back & other cool books I had no idea existed.

These caught my eye for obvi­ous rea­sons, but I had never heard of them before.  I love the paper­crafty play-on-words and the design of the Star Wars char­ac­ters which kind of pro­trude from the front cover. I know they’re children’s books, but has any­one out there actu­ally read them? Would you rec­om­mend them? (For some­one who’s 31 going on 12?)

Jesus I need to get out more.

Chuck This Out! Ultimate Turtles Fan Book

I didn’t really make a delib­er­ate effort to go out shop­ping on Black Fri­day, but was dragged out of my cave by my older sis­ter and some­time in the after­noon we wound up at my local Tar­get. I fig­ured while I was there I might as well try to make the most of it, so nat­u­rally I grav­i­tated toward the toy aisle in search of Ninja Tur­tle stuff, but as I men­tioned on Twit­ter,  that ended up being a bust.

The TMNT toys are almost com­pletely cleaned out here. twitter.com/shezcrafti/sta…

— ShezCrafti (@shezcrafti) Novem­ber 23, 2012

On the bright side, it warms my heart to see empty pegs of TMNT toys, espe­cially next to all those other (still quite fully-stocked) shelves of action fig­ures. It means they’re sell­ing well, the kids are lov­ing them, and best of all, we’ll get more.

My trip to Tar­get was not a total waste, how­ever. I scored a copy of the Ulti­mate Tur­tles Fan Book  for $4.99, some­thing I’ve been try­ing to hunt down for months. It was the last one on the shelf. (I know, I could have just ordered one from Ama­zon, but what’s the fun in that?) The book has a ton of great-looking posters, a few activ­i­ties, and over 50 stickers.

Here are some pho­tos of the pages:

The “Chuck This Out!” poster of Michelan­gelo has to be my favorite. Not only is that a great pun, but I find the orange and pur­ple color scheme strangely appealing.

There’s more, but the rest of the pages are pieces of a larger poster that you’d have to rip out and piece together to assem­ble, which I’d rather not do.

For $1.99, I also couldn’t pass up this roll of TMNT gift wrap. Actu­ally, I’m kind of a gift wrap hoarder. I have an area in my base­ment that’s full of vin­tage wrap­ping paper, printed boxes, gift tags, etc. and I love to get cre­ative with it. I can’t wait to have an excuse to use this on someone’s gift.

This is one of the stupidest catalog products I’ve ever seen.

Little-known fact about ShezCrafti: I have a secret love for brows­ing shitty catalogs–the cheaper and more crap-filled, the bet­ter! Har­riet Carter, Carol Wright Gifts, Wal­ter Drake, As Seen on TV, etc.–there is no finer bath­room read­ing in all the land. I don’t ever buy any­thing, I just enjoy look­ing at all the junk because it never ceases to amaze me how much use­less crap Amer­i­cans buy.

Every now and then I stum­ble on gems like this one from ABC Dis­trib­ut­ing :

Here, I’ll blow it up because the stu­pid is kind of hard to see:

It’s one thing to write down your inter­net pass­words and carry them around with you in your pocket, as this product’s title sug­gests. It’s a whole ‘nother level of stu­pid to write them down in a jour­nal with “Inter­net Pass­words” embla­zoned on the front cover. The catalog’s descrip­tion for this prod­uct offers the fol­low­ing advice:

“If your inter­net user names and pass­words are scat­tered every­where on sticky notes and paper scraps, end the chaos with the Inter­net Pass­words journal. ”

Yes, let’s end the chaos! You should start by delet­ing your­self from the inter­net because clearly you’re doing it wrong. I hope who­ever buys this thing has their iden­tity stolen by Nigerians.

I don’t NEED this ridiculously cute Toaster USB Hub, but I want it so bad!

I mean, just look at it.

This USB Toaster Hub and toast fam­ily is the lat­est evil prod­uct from ThinkGeek that I’m pretty sure was designed specif­i­cally to take my money. This is one of those times where I have to have a long, hard talk with myself about buy­ing cute plas­tic things I don’t need. I’m hop­ing that post­ing about it here will get it out of my sys­tem because all this adorable­ness doesn’t come cheap:

The toaster itself will set you back $27.99 and doesn’t even come with any toast. Butta, Ry Ry, Crisp and Tato each cost an addi­tional $24.99 and only have a 4G capac­ity. No mat­ter how cute these are, that’s roughly $130 for only 16G of storage.

MUST RESIST.

Old School TMNT Stuff Spotted at the Mall

It has been years, pos­si­bly even a decade, since I last set food inside a Spencer’s or a Hot Topic. Spencer’s is the place to go when you need some edi­ble panties or over-the-hill gag gift, and Hot Topic may as well be named Emo­zon, Goth­mart, or Hip­sters R’ Us.

But strolling past these stores through the mall yes­ter­day my eyes could not help but be drawn to large dis­plays of that unmis­tak­able shade of ooze green:

Retro Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles Stuff!

Nat­u­rally I couldn’t resist pick­ing up a few things ( cheap Wii games aren’t the only thing I bought yes­ter­day!). I got a sweet-looking wal­let, lan­yard with key­chain, shot glass, and a strawberry-scented car air fresh­ener that has this kick­ass Turtl­e­Van design:

Here’s the other side of the shot glass, which is one of those larger ones that will be per­fect for shots of Midori.

There were also t-shirts, sets of indi­vid­ual shot and drink­ing glasses, back­packs, stick­ers, buttsons, badgets–pretty much any type of tchotchke you can think of.

I don’t know if retro-style TMNT mer­chan­dise has always been as “hot” at Spencer’s and Hot Topic as it seems to be right now, but my guess is that it’s a well-timed mar­ket­ing launch to reel in TMNT fans my age and cross-promote the new Nick­elodeon show (which pre­mieres Sep­tem­ber 29th!). What­ever the rea­son, I love it. TURTLE POWER!

Right now seems like a good time to buy Wii games.

Yes­ter­day my shopa­holic sis­ter dragged me to the local mall, which is usu­ally my idea of Hell, but the trip ended up being worth­while. While she was in Pay­less shop­ping for cheap shoes, I ducked into the neigh­bor­ing GameStop and had a good look around.

Wii games, espe­cially used   pre-owned Wii games, seem to have dropped in price sig­nif­i­cantly since the last time I looked, which was prob­a­bly a cou­ple of months ago. I picked up pre-owned copies of Epic Mikey, Kirby’s Epic Yarn, and Okami* for $11 — $15 each.

With the Wii U rumored to be releas­ing some­time in Novem­ber and retail­ers anx­ious to unload this stuff, I can only imag­ine Wii game prices will con­tinue to come down as we get closer to the Wii U launch date. If you still have a Wii and have been mean­ing to get around to play­ing some of the console’s top-rated titles, now might be a good time to pick them up.

*If you’re won­der­ing why I bought the Wii ver­sion of Okami ver­sus wait­ing for the HD remake that’s com­ing to PS3 in Novem­ber, it’s because of this , in the vain hope it will be a collector’s item some­day. I’m still going to buy Okami HD any­way!

And I’m just going to leave this here…

Because it’s even more hilar­i­ous now.

Someone just handed me a blank check!

Money is no object in this week’s assign­ment from The League of Extra­or­di­nary Blog­gers, in which we’re issued a blank check to go “pre­tend shop­ping” over at Pro­files in His­tory , the world’s largest auc­tion­eer & dealer of orig­i­nal Hol­ly­wood mem­o­ra­bilia, his­tor­i­cal   auto­graphs, let­ters, doc­u­ments, and vin­tage signed pho­tographs and manuscripts.

Up for auc­tion is an incred­i­ble lot of Hol­ly­wood mem­o­ra­bilia and pop cul­ture arti­facts from The Dreier Col­lec­tion , the pri­vate archive of bil­lion­aire Chad Dreier, who’s col­lec­tion of iconic movie props, cos­tumes, toys, pho­tographs and other trea­sures spans over a cen­tury of enter­tain­ment and pop cul­ture his­tory. Basi­cally, it is full of win and awesome.

Flip­ping through the pages of the collection’s cat­a­log , I couldn’t help but feel like:

How­ever, Brian from Cool & Col­lected (founder and Supreme Over­lord of The League) said we had to save some things for our fel­low League mem­bers and can’t hoard all the cool stuff for our­selves. Okay, Dad. Fine.

I gen­uinely ago­nized over my pre­tend pur­chases, but I think I’ve finally come to five solid decisions:

Cos­tume & Dis­play from ‘Edward Scissorhands’

Value: $60,000 — $80,000

This thing is the real deal–an orig­i­nal, screen-used cos­tume that Johnny Depp actu­ally wore dur­ing the film­ing of Edward Scis­sorhands , one of my all-time favorite movies from the golden era of Tim Bur­ton, before he  lost his god­damn mind . It comes com­plete with a pair of resin hand blades and a realistic-looking (but midly-creepy) dis­play man­nequin. But the major sell­ing point for me is that  Johnny Depp’s balls prob­a­bly touched this thing.

Michael Jackson’s ‘BAD’ Costume

Value: $200,000 — $300,000

I don’t care who you are, every­body loves or at one point used to love Michael Jack­son, includ­ing me—maybe not as much as Corey Feld­man , but enough to want to own this iconic piece of HIS­tory from one of the last good MJ eras before things got all weird . When I pic­ture Michael Jack­son per­form­ing in my head, THIS is the out­fit I envi­sion him wearing.

Com­plete Bat­man Cos­tume from  ‘Bat­man Returns’

Value: $30,000 — $50,000

Only $30,000 for a bat­suit that Michael Keaton actu­ally wore? Ha! Mere chump change. It even comes com­plete with a life cast of Michael Keaton, which I’m buy­ing specif­i­cally because he looks com­pletely con­sti­pated. It’s the per­fect con­ver­sa­tion starter for all the par­ties I will inevitably have, because every­one will want to come to my house to see this thing.

“Hey, is it just me or does Bat­man look con­sti­pated?”

“LOL he totally does! Are there any cup­cakes left?”

Wolverine’s Claws from ‘X2: X-MEN United’

Value: $20,000 — $30,000

Wolver­ine is not my favorite X-MEN char­ac­ter (an honor that goes to Gam­bit), but what X-MEN fan wouldn’t want to own a set of claws that Hugh Jack­man actu­ally used in the films? The def­i­n­i­tion of bad ass.

’20,000 Leagues Under the Sea’ Attrac­tion Poster

Value: $2000 — $3000

This gor­geous poster caught my eye right away because of its eye-popping col­ors and because GIANT SQUIDS RULE, obvi­ously. Upon closer inspec­tion, how­ever, I learned that it’s an orig­i­nal hand-silkscreened poster that was once used to pro­mote Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ride, an attrac­tion that sadly closed down in 1994. I’ve only been to Dis­ney World twice in my life, but I’m grate­ful that I got to ride 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea at least one of those times.

With an esti­mated value of  only  $2000 — $3000, this poster is the equiv­a­lent of buy­ing a pack of gum while you’re in the check­out line. But I’ve got a blank check, so why not tack it on? I’m feel­ing saucy.

My shop­ping spree total:

Some­where between OMGWTF!? and “in my dreams.”

Let’s see what my fel­low Lea­guers went shop­ping for!

Won­der­ing what this is all about? This week’s assign­ment from   The League of Extra­or­di­nary Blog­gers   was to pre­tend we had a blank check to pur­chase any­thing we wanted from The Dreier Col­lec­tion auc­tion over at Pro­files in His­tory. Here’s what my fel­low Lea­guers purchased:

• Green Plas­tic Squirt Gun bought Lost in Space trad­ing cards, PEZ, and Andy Warhol art
• Redis­cover the 80s bought EVERYTHING awe­some from the 1980s (just as I suspected)
• Adamo­tomy bought a huge Cracker Jacks collection
• Geek It Till it Hurts bought the Jaffa cos­tume from Star­gate SG-1

Three Terrible-for-Me Things I’m Doing Today

I’m bit­ter about hav­ing to work on a Sat­ur­day, so I’m doing what I always do when life sucks: indulging in awe­some things that are ter­ri­ble for me.

#1 — Eat­ing this.

I’m typ­i­cally a diehard Ben & Jerry’s fan when it comes to ice cream (food of the freak­ing gods:  Late Night Snack and Half Baked ) but this week I dis­cov­ered  this amaz­ing fla­vor of Turkey Hill ice cream:

It’s vanilla ice cream swirled with but­ter­cream frost­ing and rainbow-colored cake pieces. If I had to describe its taste, it’s some­where between amaze­balls and uni­corn poop . It’s vanilla-y and cake-y as you’d expect, but those frost­ing swirls take it to another level.

There was this cereal I used to love as a kid called Sprin­kle Span­gles  that had these candy sprin­kles that would melt in my milk and I’d swirl them around and make all kinds of crazy col­ors. That’s what this ice cream looks and tastes like.  And the best part is it’s only like $3 for a whole half-gallon, ver­sus B&J’s ridiculously-overpriced pints (five dol­lars for 14 ounces of ice cream, Ben & Jerry? Really?).

It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly rec­om­mend pick­ing some up.

#2 — Lis­ten­ing to this.

This isn’t so much ter­ri­ble for me as it is for my boyfriend who’s hav­ing to put up with it:

Clearly my musi­cal tastes are superior.

I found this absolute jewel of a com­pi­la­tion album on Spo­tify a few weeks ago. Don’t let the tacky album art (which reminds me of those awful “best of the decade” hits albums that never fea­ture the orig­i­nal artists) and gra­tu­itous use of lens flare fool you–there’s some great stuff on here: Grand­mas­ter Flash, Dazz Band, Shan­non, Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam, Johnny O, and of course Freestyle with my per­sonal favorite, “Don’t Stop the Rock ” and lots more.

#3 — Spend­ing way too much money on this.

Last night I got a lit­tle hys­ter­i­cal after the debut of the open­ing intro sequence for Nickelodeon’s upcom­ing Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles reboot and came pretty close to weep­ing openly from the sheer awe­some­ness of it. Hear­ing the the new theme song, which mixes in famil­iar phrases from the clas­sic TMNT theme song we all know and love, got me right in the childhood.

It made me feel like this:

My nat­ural reac­tion was to buy every new Nick­elodeon TMNT action fig­ure that cur­rently exists–in doubles!

But I didn’t stop there . Today I went back and ordered all the vehi­cles, includ­ing the badass chunk of plas­tic you see above. I love that in this incar­na­tion of TMNT, the party wagon is named “The Shell­raiser” and is described as a “street to sewer assault vehi­cle.” How could I not buy that?

Here are the stock pics of every­thing in boxes:

And then I also pur­chased one each of the TMNT Clas­sic Col­lec­tion fig­ures from Amazon.

Here’s the list of every­thing I picked up:

• Nick TMNT Basic Fig­ure Leonardo (x2)
• Nick TMNT Basic Fig­ure Donatello (x2)
• Nick TMNT Basic Fig­ure Raphael (x2)
• Nick TMNT Basic Fig­ure Michae­lan­gelo (x2)
• Nick TMNT Basic Fig­ure Splin­ter (x2)
• Nick TMNT Basic Fig­ure April O’Neil (x2)
• Nick TMNT Basic Fig­ure Shred­der (x2)
• Nick TMNT Basic Fig­ure Kraang (x2)
• Nick TMNT Basic Fig­ure Foot Sol­dier (x2)
• Nick TMNT Shellraiser
• Nick TMNT Ninja Stealth Bike
• Nick TMNT Dragon Chopper
• TMNT Clas­sic Col­lec­tion Leonardo
• TMNT Clas­sic Col­lec­tion Donatello
• TMNT Clas­sic Col­lec­tion Raphael
• TMNT Clas­sic Col­lec­tion Michaelangelo

I can’t wait for these things to arrive. I’m going to be the coolest thirty-year-old in the neighborhood.

This LEGO Portal set is not a lie.

Show of hands: who wants an offi­cial LEGO Por­tal set? All of you? I thought so.

You can help make it hap­pen for real by sup­port­ing Brickthing’s amaz­ing LEGO Por­tal project on CUUSOO. All you have to do is sign up for a CUUSOO account, click the green Sup­port but­ton, and answer a few sim­ple ques­tions like why you’re inter­ested and how much you’d pay. It’s just a sur­vey and doesn’t involve any exchange or pledg­ing of actual currency.

What is CUUSOO? It’s kind of like LEGO’s own ver­sion of Kick­Starter where peo­ple share their ideas for LEGO set con­cepts and get oth­ers to vote on them, with the goal of LEGO pro­duc­ing it as an offi­cial LEGO product.

Feast your eyes on these exquis­itely detailed concepts:

I count the Por­tal games among my top gam­ing expe­ri­ences of all time, not only because the story and physics-puzzle game­play are so incred­i­ble, but there’s just some­thing about roam­ing the ster­ile envi­ron­ments of the Aper­ture Sci­ence lab, push­ing big red but­tons and dodg­ing tur­ret lasers. These con­cepts show how per­fectly the game’s visual aes­thetic lends itself to LEGO. It’s almost like Por­tal was des­tined  for LEGO. And on the off-chance you’re read­ing this, LEGO, I would also play the shit out of a LEGO Por­tal video game.

Thanks to fel­low Lea­guer Tophat Sasquatch for bring­ing this to my attention.

This Kindle, iPad & Nook Cover is the Answer to ‘The Neverending Story’

For today’s post about cool but friv­o­lous prod­ucts I shouldn’t be spend­ing money on, I dis­cov­ered these hand­made cov­ers for iPad, Kin­dle and Nook designed to look like The Nev­erend­ing Story , one of my favorite ‘80s fan­tasy films. It even has a per­fect repro­duc­tion of the Auryn sym­bol, just like the dusty old book in the movie.

Each one is hand­crafted by Grim­cat Pro­duc­tions  (who also makes this kick­ass Mario ques­tion block cover) from leather and suede and bound with fil­i­gree. If I hadn’t already spent a lot of money on a light-up leather cover for my Kin­dle Touch, I would totally buy one of these, which range in price from $58.95 to $65.95 depend­ing on your device. Maybe if I ever get an iPad…

I can just imag­ine curl­ing up on a rainy day with this thing wrapped around a good fan­tasy book. Now excuse me while I go try to get that damn song out of my head.

I don’t collect LEGO, but I’d buy this Haunted House.

The last LEGO set I owned only had four dif­fer­ent col­ors of bricks. It’s not that I don’t like LEGOs or didn’t ever lust after a set, it’s just that I spent most of my child­hood (and allowance money) on things like video games and comic books. Really though, I think I was just always hold­ing out for that offi­cial  Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles  LEGO set that we never got.

I real­ize LEGO has done a lot of amaz­ing things since then, but this by far one of the coolest:

The Mon­ster Fight­ers “10228 Haunted House” is a new horror-themed LEGO set that will be released this September.

Here’s what the inside looks like:

And it comes with this set of adorable LEGO mon­sters, includ­ing two glow-in-the-dark ghosts. Zom­bie Chef is my per­sonal favorite:

I would buy this thing just to sit out for Hal­loween, but I can’t put my fin­ger on why I want it so much. Maybe it’s because it reminds me of one of my favorite toys from early childhood:

The only draw­back about the LEGO Haunted House is that it’ll set you back $179.99.

What do Hoggle and Jareth from ‘Labyrinth’ smell like?

Labyrinth  is one of my favorite movies of all time, but I’m not the type of girl who’s into things like per­fume, so I’ll prob­a­bly pass on these Labyrinth per­fumes  that  Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab  has dreamed up. But I do think it’s pretty cool that someone’s out there mak­ing a lame prod­uct like per­fume a lit­tle more awesome.

Now some­one really needs to invent Scratch ‘N Sniff inter­net tech­nol­ogy so that I can smell these five Labyrinth-inspired scents:

“13 Hours”

What it sup­pos­edly smells like:  Osman­thus and raw honey with laven­der, chamomile, white pep­per­mint, rasp­berry, hon­ey­suckle, thyme, berg­amot, and Drac­ula orchid. 

What it SHOULD smell like:  A mild blend of dirty dia­pers and that inde­scrib­able sour milk “baby” smell.

“Fairy Bites”

What it sup­pos­edly smells like:   A dark, earthy gin­ger cider. 

What it SHOULD smell like:  Uselessness.

“Gob­lin Cider”

What it sup­pos­edly smells like:  Fer­mented pump­kin, brown leather, dust, tobacco leaf, and dark woods. 

What it SHOULD smell like:  Hal­i­to­sis with a hint of grain alcohol.

“Hoggle”

What it sup­pos­edly smells like:   Fer­mented pump­kin, brown leather, dust, tobacco leaf, and dark woods. 

What it SHOULD smell like: Urine, poi­soned peaches and betrayal.

“Jareth”

What it sup­pos­edly smells like: Ethe­real lilac fougere and gleam­ing leather with ti leaf, tonka absolute, white musk, and oudh. 

What it SHOULD smell like: Hair­spray and ball sweat.

Where’s the Bog of Eter­nal Stench perfume?

That’s the kind of shit I’d buy. Seems like a wasted oppor­tu­nity on Black Phoenix’s part.

If you find the idea of Labyrinth per­fume charm­ing, you might also be inter­ested to know that Black Phoenix Alchemy Labs has crafted scents for other ‘80s favorites like  Frag­gle Rock  and The Last Uni­corn , as well as gothic sta­ples like Neil Gaiman’s works and Gris Grimly .

‘Fairy Quest’ Comic Comes to KickStarter (and Takes My Money)

Yet another awe­some Kick­Starter project that just makes me want to start throw­ing money at the com­puter screen:

Fairy Quest: Out­laws is the first book of the Fable­wood saga, a long-term project and col­lab­o­ra­tion between renown comic indus­try vet­er­ans Hum­berto Ramos and Paul Jenk­ins , the cre­ative team behind Mar­vel Comics’  Spec­tac­u­lar Spider-Man and Peter Parker: Spider-Man , and Rev­e­la­tions.   The pair describes their work on Fairy Quest as “a labor of love.”

The book first appeared as a lim­ited edi­tion hard­bound run in 2011 and imme­di­ately sold out of its 1000-copy print run after just two con­ven­tion appear­ances.  The cre­ators have taken to Kick­Starter to self-publish and raise fund­ing for a sec­ond print run, in the form of this beau­ti­fully bound hard­cover edition:

Back­ers who pledge $30 or more will receive the book, but for $40 you’ll get a signed and num­bered copy.  The visu­als in this book are absolutely gor­geous. Ramo’s amaz­ing art­work leaps off the page with Leonardo Olea’s bril­liant col­or­ing. To see more, check out this  6-page pre­view .

What is Fairy Quest?

If you’re unfa­mil­iar with the story of Fairy Quest, here’s a snip­pet from Comic Book Resources’ recent inter­view with cre­ator Hum­berto Ramos:

“Fairy Quest: Out­laws  is the first of four books that tells the story of the Fable­wood King­dom, a place where all the fairy tale sto­ries exist for one sole pur­pose: to tell their story. Every day they have to go to “work” and replay the sto­ries every mom or dad read to their kids at bed­time. Life is quiet and sim­ple if you fol­low this sim­ple com­mand: “Do not deviate.”

But well, things are about to get shaken up a lit­tle in Fable­wood because some of the inhab­i­tants aren’t happy any­more fol­low­ing the rules. Take Lit­tle Red and Mr. Woof, who both decide they wanted to stop being ene­mies and become friends; not a big deal, right? Every­body wants to have a true friend for like, but in Fable­wood this is a prob­lem… a big one.

So sud­denly Lit­tle Red and Mr. Woof turn from the most dear­est of Fablewood’s inhab­i­tants to dan­ger­ous out­laws, and they find out the only way to keep their trea­sured friend­ship is to leave the kingdom.

That’s where their jour­ney begins.”

(via CBR )

This makes the third Kick­Starter project in as many months that I’ve pledged. Can this be con­sid­ered an addiction?

13 Unique Etsy Finds Inspired by ‘Labyrinth’

I was cruis­ing around on Etsy today (as I often tend to do when I have  money burn­ing a hole in my pocket) and came across some pretty awe­some hand­made cre­ations inspired by the great­est 80’s fan­tasy film,  Labyrinth.   Below is a sam­pling of the most inter­est­ing items I could find, which range from cute to creepy.

Now hurry up, because you’ve only got 13 hours left to solve the labyrinth.

Cus­tom ‘Jareth’ Doll

Sure it’s a lit­tle creepy, but kinda cute at the same time.  At least CavingInn man­aged to get the size of David Bowie’s pack­age cor­rect, which I’m sure is the pri­mary rea­son why some­one would pur­chase this one-of-a-kind Jareth doll in the first place.  Er—that is, from what I hear.

“You have no power over me!” Framed Artwork

With this framed typog­ra­phy quote from BearAn­dRo­bot, you’ll never have trou­ble remem­ber­ing this line again.

‘Sarah’ Costume

Sarah was rock­ing the puffy shirt long before Sein­feld. FaerySpell­Cre­ations made this bil­lowy  cus­tom blouse and vest inspired by Sarah’s out­fit in the film.  I rec­om­mend pair­ing it with jeans and cheap plas­tic jew­elry to get the full effect.

Adorable Stuffed ‘Ludo’

This lit­tle guy is a hand­made cre­ation of felt and fur by Pelu­dossa, who some­how man­aged to make Ludo even more adorable than he already is.

Hand Sewn ‘Wild Gang’ Plush

With one of these hand sewn fire gob­lins by Pelu­dossa , you can “chilly down with the Wild Gang” (what­ever the hell that means) until you remem­ber you’ve  got a baby brother to save.  Sadly, the stuffed ver­sion doesn’t have a remov­able head.

‘Junk Lady’ Hand­made Art Doll

The Junk Lady was one of the coolest gob­lins in the film, and hap­pens to also be one of the coolest items on this list.  For $100, JunkPunkshop will hand­craft an orig­i­nal, one-of-a-kind gob­lin hag made of poly­mer clay who car­ries around all sorts of mis­cel­la­neous house­hold objects on her back.

‘Jareth’ Pen­dant & Mas­quer­ade Pin

There’s such a sad love deep in David Bowie’s heav­ily lined and mascara’d eyes…  These beau­ti­ful jew­elry pieces by The­Black­Em­po­rium were inspired by the film’s dreamy mas­quer­ade scene.

‘Hog­gle’ Doll Knit Pattern

Knit your own vertically-challenged, anti-social gob­lin com­pan­ion with one of AprilDraven’s Hog­gle knit­ting pat­terns .  This one won’t try to poi­son you or pee in your fountain.

“‘Ello!” Worm Hand­made Ring

Now here’s a Labyrinth worm acces­sory that’s more to scale. With this adorable hand­made,  hand painted ring from Art­ByAelia, you can lit­er­ally wrap Labyrinth’s cutest char­ac­ter around your lit­tle finger.

Dis­en­chanted ‘Door Knocker’ Pin

Knock and the door will open! (Pro­vided you haven’t pissed it off.)  Be a won­der­ful con­ver­sa­tional com­pan­ion with this hand sculpted gob­lin pin from froudian artist Trollflings.

‘Magic Dance’ Cat Colllar

What’s more fun than watch­ing Labyrinth ? Watch­ing Labyrinth while humil­i­at­ing your cat. You and kitty can dance magic dance in style with one of these bitchin’ cat col­lars from FurButtons.

‘Bog of Eter­nal Stench’ Scented Oil

I’m not sure I want to know what The Bog of Eter­nal Stench smells like, but for a mere $3.50 you adven­tur­ous types can pur­chase a vial of scented oil from rose­mary­grace  that smells just like…like…OH WHO CARES WHAT IT SMELLS LIKE, IT’S THE BOG OF ETERNAL STENCH!

‘Stu­pid Baby’ Pin

This hilar­i­ous Labyrinth pin by The­Car­bon­Cru­sader says it all. Now go say the magic words again.

Hon­or­able mention:

In what can only be described as the most majes­tic work of art I have ever laid eyes upon, “The Gob­lin King’s Cross­ing” is a cus­tom oil paint­ing by Uni­cor­natopia of Jareth rid­ing a uni­corn, hold­ing aloft his mighty power crys­tal while famil­iar Labyrinth dwellers look on with unabashed awe.

The 2011 Video Games I’m Most Looking Forward To

Some years just plain suck for video games; when there’s hardly any inter­est­ing new titles to look for­ward to, and the hype sur­round­ing big releases turns out to be more excit­ing than the actual game.  2011 is not going to be one of those years .

At the begin­ning of every year, I like to make a list of all the upcom­ing games I want to play and HOLY SHIT  this year is going to be awe­some (not to men­tion expen­sive).  Here’s what I’m look­ing for­ward to the most (as in, I will go out of my way to get these games on release day), in order of release date:

Dragon Age II

Release Date: March 8, 2011
Platform(s): PC, PlaySta­tion 3, Xbox 360

Set in the same world of Thedas, this sequel to Dragon Age: Ori­gins takes place in a dif­fer­ent region of the map called the Free Marches.  Play­ers take on the role of Hawke, a sur­vivor of the Blight and Cham­pion of Kirk­wall who rises to power through­out the game, which spans a decade.  One really inter­est­ing fea­ture is that the player can import data from Dragon Age: Ori­gins which will reflect choices that the player made in the orig­i­nal game.  One of the major things play­ers com­plained about in Ori­gins were the graph­ics.  So far, screen­shots have promised to be a major improvement.

Black Mir­ror 3: Final Fear

Release Date: April 12, 2011
Platform(s): PC

The third and final chap­ter of the The Black Mir­ror point-and-click adven­ture hor­ror series for PC picks up where the sec­ond game ends. Play­ers return as pro­tag­o­nist Dar­ren Michaels, who is haunted by the generations-old curse that runs through his bloodline.

Red Johnson’s Chronicles

Release Date: TBA, Spring 2011
Platform(s): PlaySta­tion 3

This PS3 exclu­sive promises to be a cross between the CSI and P rofes­sor Lay­ton titles in terms of game­play, with beau­ti­ful, styl­is­tic graph­ics that take full advan­tage of the PS3 hard­ware. You play as Red, a pri­vate eye inves­ti­gat­ing a high pro­file mur­der in a gritty, urban set­ting akin to New York City. This may turn out to be the most adventure-ish adven­ture game yet for PS3!

Por­tal 2

Release Date: April 18, 2011
Platform(s): PC, PlaySta­tion 3, Xbox 360

Por­tal was the sur­prise hit of 2007, and fans of the orig­i­nal game have been clam­or­ing for a sequel ever since.  In Por­tal 2, play­ers return to the Aper­ture Sci­ence facil­ity to find it dilap­i­dated and will again face rig­or­ous phys­i­cal tests as we help to rebuild.  We can expect the same inno­v­a­tive style of physics-based puz­zle game­play that made the orig­i­nal so great.

L.A. Noire

Release Date: May 17, 2011
Platform(s): PlaySta­tion 3, Xbox 360

Set in a very real­is­tic 1947 Los Ange­les cre­ated as a visual homage to 1940s noir films, L.A. Noire will have play­ers solv­ing mur­der mys­ter­ies in an open-ended, sand­box style envi­ron­ment.  Rock­star promises to deliver “a vio­lent crime thriller that blends breath­tak­ing action with true detec­tive work to deliver an unprece­dented inter­ac­tive expe­ri­ence.”  If this game turns out to be any­where near as good as Red Dead Redemp­tion , I think we can safely put it in the run­ning for Game of the Year.

ICO / Shadow of the Colos­sus HD Collection

Release Date: Q1/Q2 2011
Platform(s): PlaySta­tion 3

Orig­i­nally released on PlaySta­tion 2, ICO and its spir­i­tual suc­ces­sor Shadow of the Colos­sus are con­sid­ered to be two of the most impor­tant games in terms of artis­tic expres­sion and emo­tional response.  Fans of the orig­i­nals as well as new play­ers who want to expe­ri­ence these jour­neys for the first time will be treated to a high-definition remake for the PS3 that will also sup­port 3D.

The Last Guardian

Release Date: Q4 2011
Platform(s): PlaySta­tion 3

The newest Team ICO title that fans of ICO and Shadow of the Colos­sus are eagerly await­ing, The Last Guardian will share the same styl­is­tic, the­matic, and game­play ele­ments of its predecessors.

Alice: Mad­ness Returns

Release Date: Q4 2011
Platform(s): PC, PlaySta­tion 3, Xbox 360

If you were a fan of Amer­i­can McGee’s crit­i­cally acclaimed Alice game for PC, no doubt that this upcom­ing sequel—also designed by Amer­i­can McGee—is on your radar.  Tak­ing place 11 years after the events in the first game, Alice relo­cates from Rut­ledge Asy­lum to the care of a psy­chi­a­trist in Lon­don where she con­tin­ues to strug­gle with real­ity, slips back into mad­ness and returns a Won­der­land over­rid­den with evil.

Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception

Release Date: Novem­ber 1, 2011
Platform(s): Playsta­tion 3

I con­sider Uncharted and its first sequel two of the best games I have ever played—and I have played a lot of games.  I can’t even begin to imag­ine how devel­oper Naughty Dog will be able to top itself with this third install­ment.  The game is set pri­mar­ily against the arid, desert back­drop of  the Ara­bian Penin­sula as pro­tag­o­nist Nathan Drake goes in search of the leg­endary lost city, Iram of the Pil­lars.  The story will focus heav­ily on the friend­ship between Drake and his men­tor and fre­quent trav­el­ing com­pan­ion Vic­tor Sullivan.

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Release Date: Novem­ber 11, 2011
Platform(s): PC, PlaySta­tion 3, Xbox 360

Tak­ing place two-hundred years after the events of Elder Scrolls IV: Obliv­ion (which, btw, if you haven’t played it, shame on you),  Skyrim returns play­ers to Tam­riel, which has erupted into civil war. Play­ers take on the role of the last-surviving Dovahkiin (trans­la­tion: “Drag­onborn”) to save the world from Alduin, god of destruc­tion.   As in pre­vi­ous Elder Scrolls games, I expect an adven­ture of epic pro­por­tions.  The lat­est issue of Game­In­former has a GORGEOUS 10-page spread pre­view of this game, and it looks absolutely stunning.

I Am Alive

Release Date: TBA, 2011
Platform(s): PC, PlaySta­tion 3, Xbox 360, Nin­tendo Wii

A new, orig­i­nal (read: non-sequel) title that I’m really excited about.  A major earth­quake has destroyed Chicago and sep­a­rated it from the main­land.  Your goal is to sur­vive the apocalyptic-like sur­round­ings by for­ag­ing for food and water, and ward­ing off enemies—other human beings who threaten your own sur­vival.  Oh yeah, and you’re also try­ing to find and res­cue your miss­ing girl­friend, too.  The game has been in devel­op­ment since 2005 and suf­fered numer­ous set­backs, but is planned to be released some­time this year.

The Leg­end of Zelda: Sky­ward Sword

Release Date: TBA, 2011
Platform(s): Nin­tendo Wii

2011 is a pretty piti­ful year for Wii games, with not many new titles on the hori­zon.  But a new Zelda game, typ­i­cally her­alded by Zelda fans like the sec­ond com­ing, could make up for it. (Though I’m keep­ing my expec­ta­tions in check due to the dis­ap­point­ment that was Metroid: Other M .)

Dia­blo III

Release Date: TBA, 2011
Platform(s): PC

Bliz­zard has yet to announce a release date for its much-anticipated hack & slash sequel, but most fans of Bliz­zard games are accus­tomed to wait­ing. I just hope not for too much longer!

Child of Eden

Release Date: TBA, 2011
Platform(s): PlaySta­tion 3, Xbox 360

Remem­ber the shoot­ing game Rez ?  (And how amaz­ing it was?)  Devel­oper Tet­suya Mizuguchi, the man who gave us Rez, returns with a new game sim­i­lar in con­cept and game­play.  Like Rez, the game­play will be a har­monic fusion of sound, vision and touch as play­ers rhyth­mi­cally shoot at var­i­ous tar­gets that pro­duce melodic sounds when destroyed.  I can’t wait to expe­ri­ence it in glo­ri­ous HD on my 60″ Mitsubishi.

Dead Island

Release Date: TBA, 2011
Platform(s): PC, PlaySta­tion 3, Xbox 360

When I first heard about Dead Island —a zom­bie sur­vival hor­ror FPS set on a deserted island—I dis­missed it as just another zom­bie game. But that was before I saw this trailer .

What games are you really look­ing for­ward to this year?

CircBoard Makes Typing on Game Consoles Faster, Less Annoying

From the “Why Hasn’t Any­body Thought of this Before?” department…

Typ­ing on video game con­soles is usu­ally a huge pain in the ass. Cir­cboard is a new on-screen key­board con­cept that wants to make your life eas­ier. Typ­i­cally, on-screen key­boards, like one 360 or PS3, try to emu­late a QWERTY key­board, and the process of “typ­ing” involves a lot of visual hunt and peck. And it’s slooooooooow.

Watch the Cir­cBoard Demo:

CircBoard’s con­cept is sim­ple, yet bril­liant. I like that its devel­op­ers adapted typ­ing to gam­ing, not the other way around. CircBoard’s method of typ­ing is more native to how con­trollers func­tion, and seems like it would be easy to learn. I could see typ­ing with Cir­cBoard eas­ily becom­ing sec­ond nature—like which spell com­bi­na­tions I cast in Oblivion.

Why not just buy a USB key­board, you say? Well, for one thing, I’d pre­fer not to have extra gam­ing periph­er­als clut­ter­ing up my liv­ing room. Two, I’m a fan of things that just work , and Cir­cBoard seems like an ele­gant solu­tion to a com­mon annoy­ance. It would make YouTube surf­ing from my couch a hel­luva lot easier.

I hope one day soon to see a solu­tion like Cir­cBoard on my next-gen console!